Sir Ian Taylor

Plenty of people who watch cricket have seen Sir Ian Taylor’s work without ever knowing his name. The ball-tracking graphic that settles an lbw review, the on-screen lines that turn a yacht race into something a casual viewer can actually follow: a lot of that came out of a company in Dunedin, run by a man who started his working life as a children’s television presenter.

From Raupunga to the Small Screen

Taylor was born in Kaeo around 1949 and grew up in Raupunga, of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāpuhi descent. His first public life was on screen, presenting for TVNZ on programmes like Play School and Spot On, and later New Zealand’s Funniest Home Videos. It was an unusual apprenticeship for a technology career. It also gave him the instinct that has shaped everything since: the job is not the data, it is the story the data tells.

Animation Research Limited

In 1990 he founded Animation Research Limited in Dunedin. It grew into one of the country’s leading computer animation companies, known internationally for its sports graphics as much as its television advertising work. Its Virtual Eye product became the tool that brought ball-tracking to cricket’s Decision Review System, and its graphics have helped audiences read the America’s Cup, golf and sailing. In 2014 the team shared a Sports Emmy for its America’s Cup mobile app, a rare result for a business run out of the lower South Island rather than a global broadcast hub.

A Different Kind of Tech Story

Taylor’s career cuts against the usual New Zealand tech story. He built a globally recognised business without leaving Dunedin, and he has been open about doing it as a Māori entrepreneur, something the sector acknowledged when he was named Outstanding Māori Business Leader of the Year in 2013. He has used his profile to argue that young New Zealanders, and rangatahi in particular, should see technology as a place they belong.

Recognition

The honours have followed the work. He was inducted into the New Zealand Technology Hall of Fame in 2009, named North & South’s New Zealander of the Year in 2010, and made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2012 for services to television and business. In 2019 he was named Innovator of the Year at the New Zealander of the Year Awards, and in 2021 he was knighted, promoted to Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting, business and the community.

What makes Sir Ian Taylor worth paying attention to is not any single award. It is the through-line. Whether he was in front of a Play School camera or building the graphics that decide a Test match, the aim stayed the same: take something complicated and make it make sense to an ordinary person watching at home. That is a rarer skill in business than it sounds.